


So Much More

by sashet



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashet/pseuds/sashet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Look into the thoughts of The Doctor as he visits his friends at the end of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Much More

**So Much More**

_"I could do so much more.  
SO! MUCH! MORE!"_

_"But where are you going?"  
"To get my reward!"_

I know now that my time is short, that the inevitability of the death that was prophesised by the Ood so very long ago is here. I can feel it in every cell of my body, the slow burning pain of a regeneration that I do not want and yet can no longer avoid.

I have but a few short hours before even I can no longer fight the changes in my body and I will have to succumb to the ravages of a transformation that will see a new man walk away with my memories and I will be, like those before me are to me, just a fleeting whisper in his consciousness.

But a few hours and a time machine are all I need. In all my previous lives I have never had the chance, the opportunity, to do what I am going to do now. I could have done so much more with my life and now I can at least say farewell to those who stood beside me in my darkest hours, who laughed and cried with me, who saved me from what I could have become. Soon they will no longer know me and they too, will become the memories of a past, to be overwritten with new friends and new adventures. That is the way of the Time Lords, we change and we move on, but just for once I have time to say...thank you to those I loved and never had the courage to tell.

_Martha & Mickey:_

I should have known that these two would end up together, they were kindred spirits. They both loved somebody who they knew couldn't or wouldn't love them back and now they loved each other. They had both grown so much since I first met them, grown and flourished and found their own place in life.

Since Torchwood was destroyed and Jack Harkness was still missing they were the Earth's last hope, carrying on the fight against the forces of evil that would enslave the Earth and subjugate its population. I don't think they knew how close to death they came that day in the ruins and the rubble, if I had been but a second later it would have been too late. The Earth still needed Doctor Jones and the 'tin dog' and I could save them, even though I couldn't save myself.

Below in the sunshine they talked about their plans and I smiled as with one swift blow the Sontaran on the high gantry fell to the floor, his gun clattering harmlessly to the ground. They were safe, this time, and I could hope for no more. Maybe I had changed the laws of time and they should have died that day, but I had seen enough deaths and I no longer cared about the laws of time, let my new self worry about that, they were my friends.

Something stirred in their minds and they stopped and looked up at me. They were too far away for words and even if they hadn't been I doubt I would have known what to say. This was for the best, a silent farewell. I knew it and I think they did too because they held each other tightly as I turned and walked away. I couldn't see their tears but I could feel their love, for each other and for me and I could see my tears.

_Sarah Jane Smith:_

How could I say goodbye to this most remarkable woman, a woman I had known many lifetimes ago and who I thought I would never see again? I had shown her so much, taken her to so many places and then just left her, no thank you, no goodbye; I hadn't even taken her home.

Sarah Jane Smith had forged the most remarkable life without me and I was proud of that. I don't know if she had ever expected to see me again, but when she did it was as if our time apart had never happened, she was by my side again, running with me to save the world

Her life and her world was now her son, an incredible young man in many ways and yet a typical teenager in others. He had the teenagers' lack of regard for danger which would have cut short his young life and neither of them deserved that, so I bent the laws of time again and saved another of the 'little people'.

He knew who I was and maybe even why I was there (see, I said he was smart) and he did what I hadn't been able to and ran to his mother. I had walked to her house again and again and each time I had turned away not knowing what to say, we had said goodbye so many times since we had met again why was it that this one was so hard? She had seen me regenerate before so why couldn't I tell her that was soon to be my fate again?

I was at the door of the TARDIS, running (as usual) from my feelings and my responsibilities when I felt her at the edge of my consciousness. I half turned to see her, a sad and yet knowing look on her face and the strength of my feelings for her swelled inside me causing me to catch my breath. She didn't say anything and all I could mange was a weak half wave.

I hoped that she wouldn't forget me but it was time to let her go, so I walked away before I saw her tears and she saw mine.

_Captain Jack Harkness:_

There are lost souls all over the Universe and right now Jack Harkness is one of them. He is a fixed point in time made that way by the Bad Wolf and now unable to die he has endured so many hardships and so many losses in his life that he has no life left to give.

I couldn't be there to help him when he needed me the most, it is just the way it is, another fixed point in time that even I, the Time Lord Victorious can not change. He had to face the 456 alone, they were his demons and only he could slay them. It cost him more than even I had expected and I wished I could have saved him from the torment of his choices and his actions.

I think that even without me he would have found a way to live and love again, he was that sort of man, indomitable in both body and spirit, but I thought that just this once he maybe needed a little help.

He wasn't hard to find, just another lonely figure in a loud bar on the far reaches of the Universe, still trying to find a reason for his actions at the bottom of a glass. He looked so old and lost, I could have gone and sat with him, told him what he wanted to hear. Tried to show him that in the end EVERYTHING happens for a reason, even when that reason may be impossible to comprehend, but this was one time that he needed to learn that for himself.

Did I manipulate the actions of Midshipman Alonso Frame to ensure that he too was in that loud, crowded bar just when I needed him to be? It wouldn't have been the first time I had manipulated people but usually it was to my own ends. This time it was good to know that my intervention was, hopefully, going to help…both of them.

I sent a note across the bar, it said more to him than just:

'His name is Alonso.'

It said that I can't look out for you any more, I have to go, but I'll never forget you. It said that the pain of loss shows that you at least lived and loved and that you are still alive. It said…thank you Jack.

His eyes, which had been hollow and sad, sparkled with a little of the Jack Harkness I had first met in a war torn London and I knew that deep down inside that ravaged shell of a man, that incorrigible con man still lived on. He tipped his head quizzically as he read the note and then, as the weary figure of Alonso Frame sat down next to him, I could see that despite all he had been through he just couldn't help himself. I could practically feel his 51st Century pheromones roaring into life as he threw me a smart salute and took the decision to move on with his life.

As I tipped him a casual salute back I wondered if we - if 'he' - would meet Jack again, I hoped so. Jack Harkness may have been a fixed point in time, but he was one of my making and together we were better.

_Verity Newman:_

I have had to do some unusual things in my 900 years but none more so than using the Chameleon Arch inside the TARDIS to make myself human. I suppose I could have just run from the Family of Blood, hidden in the vortex until their short life span was over, but the only way that I could be sure that even there they wouldn't find me was to no longer be a Time Lord.

1913 was a strange choice of time, a world on the brink of a war that would ravage it for years, change history and people almost beyond recognition, and yet to me for those few short months it was the time and place I was meant to be.

I truly loved Joan Redfern and would have been happy to have lived out a human life with her, taking the slow path through a life filled with work and family, but it wasn't to be. Circumstances changed, people were dying because of me and I had to face up to the brutal fact that I wasn't ever going to have the life of John Smith, schoolteacher.

I broke both our hearts when I cast aside John Smith and faced the Family of Blood once and for all. I was a vengeful Time Lord burning with hatred and I made them pay for what we had both lost…oh how I made them pay.

Joan Redfern didn't love me, she loved John Smith and chose to stay on Earth and live her normal life without him. I know that I could have gone back in time to see her again, watched her from afar, seen what her life had become but I never did. I was too much of a coward, afraid that she would have forgotten me, forgotten him.

Now though, as my life was ending I had to know. How did she remember me? Did she hate me for what I had done to her and to those around her? Did she find happiness again? I didn't even know if when I regenerated I would remember her and I had to know had she been happy?

Verity was the mirror of her great grandmother and as soon as I saw her I was overwhelmed with feelings that I had thought long buried. I almost turned and walked away as I heard her explaining to those who bought her book all about her great grandmother and her 'man from the stars' - how it wasn't just a story, it was true, she loved a man who fell to Earth and into her life. It didn't really matter if they believed Verity or not, she knew it was true just as certainly as Joan had done, just as certainly as I did and we were the only ones who really mattered.

Then it was my turn and I felt self-conscious as I handed her my copy of 'A Journal of Impossible Things'. She didn't look up as she asked who she should make out the dedication to.

"The Doctor" I told her.

"To…The Doctor. Funny that was the name he used," she told me as she wrote in the front of the book.

As she looked up at me and handed me back the book I saw the realization in her eyes. She must have known or guessed from the descriptions of me in the Journal that I wasn't just a Doctor, I was The Doctor. Her great grandmother's Doctor.

"Was she happy? In the end?"

"Yes. Yes she was."

And knowing that made me happy too.

"Were you?" she asked me.

I fought back the unexpected lump in my throat and walked away.

_Donna Noble:_

There is a certain symmetry to my relationship with Donna Noble. When she crashed into my TARDIS and my life she should have been getting married and now at the very end of our journey together she had finally achieved that.

All that had gone between those two events was now lost to her. The people she had met, the places she had been, not even a fading memory and, sad as that was, it was necessary. Necessary so that she could be standing here today, Mrs Donna Temple-Noble, surrounded by those who love her the most, those who know what her life has been and those who will protect her for the rest of her life.

I had to come and not just because I had promised the remarkable Wilfred Mott that I would see him again before…before I died. I had to see that Donna's was not another life tarnished by its association with me. I had to find my own peace with what I had been forced to do to her.

I knew, I KNOW that I had no choice, not really and although she knew that too it didn't make what I had to do any easier. I COULDN'T…wouldn't let her die. She may have lived a week, a month, a year I don't know all I do know is that sooner or later all that she knew, all of me, past and present that lived in her mind would have overwhelmed her.

Donna Noble, anything but an ordinary temp from Chiswick, the woman who had saved the Universe from an evil it had no comprehension of, deserved better than that. I couldn't give her better but I could give her life and so I took away almost all that had made her want to run with a long string of alien nothing and see the stars.

I stayed well back, like the ghost at the banquet, and just watched. Everything was so….normal, just as it should be. Donna was just the same as when I had first met her all those years ago, smarter than she likes to let on and NOT afraid to give her caustic wit and her opinion a voice. She seemed happy.

Wilfred and Sylvia saw me and, careful not to let Donna know, came over. They were still concerned that if she saw me it would trigger the memories of her time with me and the DoctorDonna would resurface with devastating consequences.

I know that Wilf had only pride in what his granddaughter had experienced during her travels with me but I still wasn't sure about how Sylvia felt…with me it was always the mothers I had trouble with!

This wasn't the first trip I had made into the life of the Noble's.

"Thing is, I never carry money. So I just popped back in time, borrowed a quid off a really lovely man. Geoffrey Noble, his name was. 'Have it', he said. 'Have that on me'."

I handed over a small brown envelope…a lottery ticket for a triple rollover. There are times when having a time machine is DEFINITELY advantageous….and who's to say that Mr and Mrs Temple-Noble wouldn't have bought a winning lottery ticket themselves anyway? Right now I don't care how many laws of time and space I may have broken. I am the last of the Time Lords.

I couldn't stay. I could feel the regeneration energy building inside of me, ripping my cells apart and it hurt, it really hurt. I had done what I came here to do, assuage any remaining guilt I had at what I had to do to Donna and to in my own small way make sure that the rest of her life was the best that it could be. They say that money can't buy happiness and that may be true but, in this case, I knew that it would.

Looking back at the wedding party, young people with their lives ahead of them, I felt envious of them; there's was the one life that I could never have. The last of the Time Lords will always be alone, companions will come and go and in the end he will be the only one left. I suppose my impending regeneration was making me melancholy but when I saw Wilf standing proudly in that confetti strewn churchyard giving me a smart salute it was almost more than I could bear. The tears that filled his eyes at the grief at what had happened to Donna and what was still to happen to me were so….human.

I wanted to stay there but for so many reasons I couldn't I just couldn't and so, with a heart that had once briefly been filled with the joy of the moment and was now so heavy, just like the ghost I slipped away.

_Rose Tyler:_

I WAS dying, I knew it with a dread certainty now, I could feel it with every breath and every step I took. I didn't have long but I had one more place to go, one more person to see. One more chance and no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much it hurried me towards my inevitable death this was the one I COULD NOT miss.

This was Rose Tyler, the woman who had saved me from the wreck I had become in the aftermath of the Time War, the woman who had loved me without question and who against all the odds I had loved back.

I was in so much pain now that it had become almost impossible to fly the TARDIS accurately and I had to hope that I had landed where I wanted to be. Not just the place but the time. It was important that I met Rose before she met me….wibbley, wobbly timey, whimey sort of stuff! I wanted to be able to reassure her that her life held more for her than just work, TV and Mickey.

It seemed fitting that there was snow on the ground, real snow not the man made fallout from an exploding spaceship. I loved snow!

And then, suddenly there they were, Rose and Jackie bickering about something and nothing and for a second I had no breath left. Rose looked just as I remembered her from the basement of Henricks in oh….just a few more months' time.

They laughed and hugged and went their separate ways and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just go up to her and say 'Hey Rose you don't know me but…' And yet could I let her go without a word? The choice was taken from me with a sudden and unexpected burst of pain that filled me so completely that I could do no more than hang onto the wall at my side and groan out loud. She heard me and turned.

"You all right, mate?" literally a lifeline to a dying man.

"Yeah," I told her searching for any sign that she may have recognized me but of course she didn't. I had been a different man back then, angry and full of hatred with a leather jacket and a Northern accent.

"Too much to drink?" she asked me in her non-judgmental way.

"Something like that," I told her back, an easy lie as my body betrayed me and I swayed as I pushed myself from the safety of the wall.

Over our time together I think I had forgotten the innocent girl that Rose Tyler was when we first met and yet here she was, all happy smiles and full of a life still waiting to be led and I knew in that one moment why I had fallen in love with her and why I had never had the courage to tell her that.

In a parallel universe, a more world-weary Rose Tyler lived a life with a version of me that was so like me and yet so not like me. I hoped that she had learned to love him because the part of me, the real me, the me that stood before her now in the snow of the Powell Estate, that loved her lived in him. He would love her like I never could, no matter how much I wanted to.

She turned to walk away…

"What year is this?" I asked her. I just needed to know where I was in her life. For once had got the right time and the right place.

"Blimey, how much did you have?"

I shrugged in response. What could I tell her? Best to let her think I was just another drunk, staggering home from the pub.

"It's 2005. January the first."

2005 – how Rose Tyler's life was going to change in that year. Soon she will be seeing people and places that she couldn't even have begun to imagine. Before the year is out she will have saved the Universe, created a fixed point in time that even I cannot change and more than all of that, she will have saved the Last of the Time Lords from his path of self destruction.

"2005," a pause to let another wave of pain pass through me, faintly in the far reaches of my mind I thought I heard an echo of Ood song…calling me home. My life was almost ended, I knew it, I could FEEL it and soon everybody would be able to see it. I had no more time and yet now with Rose once more I never wanted it to end.

"Tell you what," what harm could it do? I wouldn't tell her anything…spoilers! "I bet you are going to have a really great year."

"Yeah? See ya," she said finally turning away and heading for home. She stopped once briefly to look at the strange man in the long coat as he weaved unsteadily away towards something that only he could see.

Her smile made the pain bearable because with companions like Rose Tyler a Time Lord could never live too long.

**Author's Note:**

> Those scenes at the end of End Of Time where The Doctor visits each of those he loves the most seemed to by crying out for someone to look inside his head and see what he was thinking...so I did.
> 
> My thanks to Dr. D for the swift Beta and the words of encouragement.
> 
> First published in September 2010


End file.
